Modern Lovers (19 page)

T
he Waves was going to be gorgeous—it would help revitalize the Rockaway community, it would be an emissary of deep Brooklyn values, it would be less expensive to renovate than a hotel in Manhattan. It turned out that Dave had been planning it for a while—it was all part of the EVOLVEment plan. Dave had taken a couple of meetings with architects, some EVOLVEment yoga practitioners who lived in the neighborhood, just to get a sense of time and money. Now he wanted Andrew to come along—he really “got it,” Dave said. They were meeting at one of the coffee shops on Cortelyou, a few doors past Hyacinth. Dave and Andrew walked down from EVOLVEment.

“I hear that place is good,” Dave said.

“It is. The couple who owns it are our good friends,” Andrew said.

“Should we meet there instead?” Dave stopped.

“No,” Andrew said, and kept walking.

They were in front of the café, and Dave waved to a guy sitting in the window. He held up a finger—
One minute—
and then turned so that his back was facing their date.

“I've been meaning to ask you this,” Dave said. “And there's no really good way. I don't want you to feel awkward, or like there's any pressure coming from me. You know that I am all about comfort and
good vibes, and if this is not your thing, man, that is
cool
. But I think it might be your thing.”

Andrew squinted into the sunlight. “Uh-huh,” he said.

“I want to bring you on as an investor. For the Waves. I think that it would be a really amazing project for us to do together. What do you think? Do you want to be partners?”

“How much are we talking? I mean, in terms of money, how much?” Andrew could see it so easily—himself as a hotelier. Picking lamps and records for the guest rooms, talking to reporters at the
New York Times
about giving back to Brooklyn, about introducing people to places beyond the bridge, beyond Williamsburg.

“It's hard to say,” Dave said. “We could probably get the whole thing going for under a million, give or take. The place is on the market for seven hundred thou.” He ran his hands over his beard, giving the whole thing a squeeze. “There are other investors, of course, but they don't really
see it
, you know, which makes the whole thing way more of an uphill battle.”

“Of course,” Andrew said. It could be his new circuit—he could sit in the back during guided-meditation classes and look over lists of vendors they needed to contact. He could write checks—he could make something new. “I'd love to,” Andrew said. He put out his hand, but Dave dove into his body for a hug instead, giggling.

E
lizabeth was forgetting things everywhere—she forgot her dressy shoes at the office, she forgot the keys to her listings at home. She'd texted Zoe to make a dinner date but hadn't heard back. She and Andrew weren't talking, and she reluctantly understood why, even though he was obviously the one acting like a crazy person. Signing his name on one piece of paper wasn't betrayal. Still, she understood: marriage was supposed to be a sacred covenant, and if that wasn't quite achievable on a daily basis, marriage was about always getting the okay from the other person before doing something major. Want to go bungee jumping, or switch health-insurance policies? Want to pierce the kid's ear? Want to buy a new sofa, book airline tickets to France? You had to confer. It wasn't the same as asking permission, nothing so archaic—it was about being on the team, being equal partners. She wanted to blame the fact that she'd said yes on being the kind of woman who wanted to be accommodating to everyone, but that was only part of it. The other, larger reason was that she really did want to see the movie. Elizabeth imagined seeing it by herself, in the middle of the afternoon, and weeping into a bucket of popcorn. That was what she wanted—to celebrate and mourn her youth simultaneously.

•   •   •

E
lizabeth wanted to take some photos of Zoe's house, mostly for her own reference. They still hadn't pulled the trigger, and maybe they never would, but she wanted to take a few pictures for herself. The house had never belonged to her, of course, but Lydia had never belonged to her either, and they both had helped to build whatever it was that made up Elizabeth's life. She wanted to walk around the house without Zoe, for the first time in a hundred years with no actual purpose—not because she'd agreed to walk Bingo or to watch Ruby or to bring in the mail. She just wanted to think about the house, and about Andrew. It was easy enough to convince herself that it was a business visit—no matter how well you knew a house, pictures were important—and that way, eventually, she could talk to Deirdre about the list price, just to get a second opinion.

Zoe hadn't said anything about moving forward lately—in fact, she'd been a little hard to pin down—but she didn't hesitate to give her blessing for Elizabeth to pop over and poke around. It was all a part of her figuring out what she wanted to do; that's how Elizabeth saw it. She didn't want to feel like an angel of death, hovering over her friends' marriage—she was just trying to be helpful. If Jane and Zoe could split up, it could happen to anyone. They'd always been stable, and happy enough, happy as anybody. Sure, Zoe sometimes complained about Jane, but no more than Elizabeth complained about Andrew. Having someone close to you decide to quit—or even seriously consider it—was axis-knocking.
Why them?
Elizabeth found herself wondering.
Why now?
Zoe didn't seem clear herself, which was the scariest part.

Elizabeth had always had keys to the Bennetts'. The Kahn-Bennetts'. Would Zoe go back to being just plain Bennett? There were so many things to worry about, enormous and tiny—it was too much to bear. Elizabeth jogged up the steps and unlocked the door. Zoe had
told her that they'd all be out—she and Jane doing some restaurant thing and Ruby at Hyacinth. Bingo was asleep on the living-room floor and raised his head and offered a genial sniff.

It was always better to be in someone's house without them—that's when you could really look at the cracks in the ceiling, the sticky cabinets, the floors of the closets. No one wanted to spend that much money for someone else's dirt. If Zoe really went through with it (with the breakup, with the sale—these things were separate and they were together, kissing cousins), Elizabeth would have to bring in a real cleaning crew, at least twice, once for the official photos and once for the first open house. She knew two Salvadoran women who could make any house look like the Vatican—she'd have Zoe call them for sure if the house actually did go on the market.

Mostly, it looked the same as it had a hundred years ago, when she and Andrew had shared the house with Zoe and the other guys from Oberlin. Elizabeth closed her eyes and could see the Indian-print tapestries that had hung on the walls, the full ashtrays on the coffee table. Disco money paid for the house, and there had been traces of it in various spots: records everywhere, some framed on the walls, old hilarious photos of Zoe's parents with giant Afros and glittering jumpsuits. Those were gone now, replaced with pictures of Ruby as a baby, and the elder Bennetts appeared in their civilian clothes.

Elizabeth snapped the kitchen, which had the best stove in Ditmas Park. People wouldn't understand how much it cost by looking at it—she'd have to explain in the listing. The living room and its endless piles of magazines, the dining room and its endless supply of chairs. She photographed the staircase from below and the pretty sconces that were original to the house. On the second floor, she flipped on the light switch in the hallway and took pictures in the bathroom. She paused outside Ruby's room, which Elizabeth had once shared with Andrew. That was the first time she ever really felt like they were a couple, like they were adults who had chosen to be together. He was
so good at everything then, so good at building them shelves out of bricks and boards, so good at kissing her shoulders before they went to sleep. He liked showing her his city, the good parts and the bad parts, the museums and the parts of Central Park he had explored alone as a teenager. His hair was still long, and he would tuck it back behind his ears over and over again, a nervous tic, as they sat across from each other in bed, eating take-out Chinese food. He made her laugh. He danced. Elizabeth turned the knob to Ruby's room and opened the door, flicking the light on.

“Mum, Jesus! Knock much?!” Ruby said. Elizabeth saw a flash of a bare breast. There was some scrambling.

“Oh, I'm so sorry, sweetie, it's Elizabeth, your mum said that no one would be home,” Elizabeth said, covering her eyes with her hand. “Wait a second,” she said, and slid her hand back down.

“Hi, Mom,” Harry said, and pulled the sheet up to his chin. He and Ruby were sitting side by side, all red cheeks and knotty hair sticking up at odd angles. The room smelled like sweat and dirty clothes and other identifiable things that Elizabeth refused to let herself name.

“Harry,” Elizabeth said. “What are you doing here?” She covered her eyes again. “Can you please get dressed?” There was more scrambling. Elizabeth heard the sound of a belt buckle and couldn't keep herself from groaning.

“Okay, it's fine,” Harry said a minute later, sitting on the edge of the bed. Ruby had pulled on a dress and piled her hair on top of her head with a giant clip, the braids from the concert already gone. Harry looked so old, too old—he looked like his father, and Elizabeth felt her nose start to run, which always happened right before she burst into tears. “Shit, Mom, I'm sorry. It's a messed-up situation, I guess, but it's really not that bad. We're using, um, protection and everything, I swear.”

Elizabeth blinked quickly. She felt a bit faint, as if she'd just
inhaled a can of paint thinner. “Do you mind if I sit down, Ruby?” She looked around and saw the telltale lump of a beanbag chair underneath a small mountain of clothing. Ruby pointed and nodded. Harry's cheeks seemed to indicate he would rather his mother leave the room where he had, until very recently, been naked with a girl, but he wasn't going to say that.

“Okay,” Elizabeth said. “So. Here we are.”

“Want a glass of water?” Ruby said. She crawled to the edge of the bed like a puppy, her cleavage amply visible.

“Sure,” Elizabeth said, turning her face toward the ceiling. Ruby padded out the door and down the stairs.

“Mom,” Harry said, “I'm really sorry.”

“Sorry about which part, love? Sorry about not staying away from Ruby or sorry about growing up?” Something was digging into her back—Elizabeth reached behind her, pulled out a chemistry textbook, and tossed it onto the floor.

Ruby pushed the door back open with her elbow and handed glasses of water to both Elizabeth and Harry. “Let's just be real about all this, okay?” She looked to Harry, who simultaneously nodded and curled his lip, no doubt as afraid of what Ruby was about to say as Elizabeth was. “Harry and I are not trying to be sneaky assholes, Elizabeth. We just like spending time together. It is totally my fault that we got in trouble, but it's also totally his fault, and that's okay.”

“I know,” said Elizabeth. “I don't care anymore.”

“What?” said Harry.

“I don't care that you two are an item. I'm sure no one says that anymore. I don't care that you're hooking up, or on lock, or on the down low. It's fine with me. It's healthy! It's just also really sad, for reasons I can't quite put into words.”

She looked at Harry. “You're my baby. I just want to know that you're safe, and that nothing bad is going to happen to you.”

“Mom, I'm seventeen.” He was blushing.

“And you'll be my baby when you're thirty-five and when you're fifty.” She was sweating. “I think I'm having a hot flash, is that possible?”

Ruby and Harry both looked uncomfortable.

“Listen,” Elizabeth said. “I'm not going to tell your father, Harry, or your mothers, Ruby. But you two have to promise me something.” She was hot, and tired. She felt like she was a hundred years old, like a wrinkled old crone in a fairy tale.

“Anything,” Harry said.

“Depends,” Ruby said.

“Help me figure out what your father is doing, and how to get him out of there. You'll be my little Nancy Drew and Hardy boy. Will you?” Harry looked startled at her request, but Elizabeth kept talking. “I just need a little help. Can you two give me a little help?”

They nodded, solemn-faced. Elizabeth gulped down her sweating glass of water. “I'll put this in the sink on my way out. And clean your room, Ruby. It looks like a deranged hobo is squatting in here, okay?”

“Um,” Ruby said.

“See you at home, Harry,” Elizabeth said. She pushed herself up to stand and walked slowly into the hallway. She pulled the door shut behind her and waited for a minute, to make sure there was no laughter. When she was satisfied, Elizabeth stepped gingerly down the stairs and back out onto the street, her head up high, as if she were walking on a balance beam.

Z
oe had texted Jane late that afternoon:
DINNER TONIGHT? CHINESE, SUNSET PARK?
It was what they used to do when they wanted to talk business over a meal. They couldn't go anywhere in the neighborhood, because they knew every single person who owned every single restaurant (there were only half a dozen, after all), and eventually whoever it was would come over and sit with them, and they'd all be talking about purveyors and farms and about which servers had drug problems. Jane texted back,
PICK ME UP AT EIGHT
, and at eight o'clock on the dot she was standing in front of Hyacinth, hands in her pockets, waiting for Zoe to appear at the corner and then pull up in front. The car appeared at 8:03 p.m., not bad for her wife. Jane still loved saying “wife.” If that was the Long Island in her, so be it. She had no interest in being transgressive. She loved living in the only neighborhood in New York City that felt like the suburbs, and she loved living there with her wife and her kid and her garage and her walk-in pantry. Zoe slowed to a stop, the windows rolled down.

Jane got into the car and buckled her seat belt. “Hey,” she said.

“Hiya,” said Zoe. She was wearing a dress that Jane liked, a blue swirly thing that tied around her waist. “How are you?” They'd spent the day talking about vegetables and orders and menus, but that wasn't what she meant.

“Not bad. This is a nice surprise.” Jane rubbed her hands on her knees.

“Yeah, well. I was in the mood for Chinese food.”

“Sounds great.” Jane crossed her arms over her chest, then shifted back to her hands on her knees.

“Relax,” Zoe said. She reached over and cupped her hand over Jane's. “It's just dinner.”

“If it were just dinner, we'd be at home.” Jane fiddled with the door lock. They'd turned up Coney Island Avenue.

“Fine, it's a date,” Zoe said. “Happy?”

Jane let out a little snort. “If you must know, yes.” She slid her phone out of her pocket and plugged it into the car stereo. The night had cooled down, and the air that blew in through the car's open windows was brisk enough to give her tiny goose bumps on her forearms. Jane scrolled through her music until she found just the right song and then turned up the volume. Zoe's parents' biggest hit of 1978, “(My Baby Wants to) Boogie Tonight,” blasted through the speakers, and Zoe laughed. They were having a good time already.